- From: Nir Dagan <nir@nirdagan.com>
- Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 02:02:39 GMT
- To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
To follow up on Daniel, I absolutely agree that the best way to procede is to promote the guidelines as of general or universal acceesibility/usability rather than for people with disabilities. First, because it is corrrect. Second, because it sells better. One type of agents that could be mentioned more often in many particular guidelines are indexing robots. In my view it requires a little bit of content changing as well. If it will be only in the name and wording, readers will find quickly that they have been cheated. I would be careful in suggesting techniques that are usability increasing in some particular situations but are universally usability reducing. For example the technique of not nesting unordered lists and using ordered lists insted, even if the content calls for unordered ones. This goes against the spirit of universal design as it violates the principle of using the right structural element for the content in question. Another problematic technique is the so called invisible D-links, which are as invisible as the "HTML terorists' " invisible images. I do not think that this hack should be part of a W3C recommendation. If a description is vital for everybody who doesn't see images, it should not be invisible, and should have a meaningful link description, rather than the letter D (which is meaningfull only to accessibility activists in English speaking countries, but not that much to normal people who turn off image loading). If it is only suplementary information that is inessential for understanding the page a longdesc should do, even though few browsers support this now. Most users in the world get highly confused when they encouter a site full of Ds lying all over the place; and end up following links that they can't figure out what they are for even after following four or five of them; this technique is a major usability hazard that no serious web designer interested in a wide readership would implement. Since one can't realy make them invisible, they shouldn't be there at all. With longdesc it is a different story as (good) browser's default should be hide longdesc, and the knowledgable user who wants them will configure the browser accordingly. Nir Dagan, Ph.D. http://www.nirdagan.com mailto:nir@nirdagan.com "There is nothing quite so practical as a good theory." -- A. Einstein
Received on Monday, 23 November 1998 12:02:17 UTC